The Dog Ate My Novel by Wil Triggs

In May of 1936, John Steinbeck wrote his agent Elizabeth Otis: "My setter pup, left alone one night, made confetti of about half of my manuscript book. Two months work to do over again. It set me back. There was no other draft.”
 
As both an aspiring writer and a dog lover, I really enjoy this story. I can only imagine the frustration. My dogs have gotten into a lot of my stuff over the years, but never have either of them eaten my writing. Of course, I’m typing this on my laptop, so there is no paper manuscript to chew. My dogs have preferred slippers or shoes or socks, the occasional pork chop (bone-in), my winter hat from Russia, Christmas candy, hardbound cookbooks, birthday cake, crayons. It’s a fairly long list and that’s just off the top of my head.
 
Still, my imagination was piqued. Imagine months of work chewed up, and no computer backup. Steinbeck didn’t have a hard drive. He wrote longhand on paper. It doesn’t say he was finished with the manuscript, but he must have been pretty close.
 
Things happen to us. Months of work, years even, can get washed away by the salivating mouth that is this crazy life or my distracted brain or my misguided heart. God’s doing a good work and then the good work itself, me, does something stupid. How to handle a setback like that?

“I was pretty mad but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically,” Steinbeck wrote in his letter to his agent. “I didn’t want to ruin a good dog for a ms [manuscript]. I’m not sure it is good at all. He only got an ordinary spanking with his punishment flyswatter. But there’s the work to do over from the start.”

God is cooler about these things than Steinbeck. It’s not as if he doesn’t know already whatever way it is that we are going to mess up. John Steinbeck was surprised when his novel went to shreds, but when Jesus found me having destroyed what others might consider a thing of beauty, he was not the least bit surprised.

“I’m not sure Toby didn’t know what he was doing when he ate the first draft,” Steinbeck continued. “I have promoted Toby-dog to be a lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature. But as for the unpredictable literary enthusiasms of this country, I have little faith in them.”

In the spiritual realm, I’m more often dog than Nobel laureate. God is doing something good, and then I set my teeth on the good works of the Lord and the manuscript goes to pieces. I think of them more as something to play with or gnaw into pieces than a message to the world around me.

But the transformed life, my transformed life, is not really mine at all. The dog didn’t write the novel; the dog’s master wrote it.

Steinbeck had to start over on Of Mice and Men, completing the new draft by August of that year, just about three months later. It’s a short novel, but to turn it around again in just three months impresses me. Besides the book, it’s a story that has been produced as a stage play and in the movies. All of that would have been lost if Steinbeck hadn't persevered.
 
My setup is not God’s. Jesus is always starting over with me like Steinback did on his manuscript. Jesus doesn’t give up. He both loves and likes me. He enjoys me. He has a story for me, and he won’t let me ruin the telling or doing of it.

I am both the dog who ate the novel and the novel itself, a work that seemingly will never get finished, but really will because Jesus has promised to bring to completion the work he has begun. It will be finished. Even I can’t mess that up. The Apostle Paul wrote about this In one of his manuscripts: "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work In you will bring It to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6)
 
The dog ate the novel when his master was away. My Master is never far away, and he gives me the best words ever to eat, words that can change everything. 
 
Your words were found, and I ate them,
    and your words became to me a joy
    and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
    O Lord, God of hosts.
Jeremiah 15:16
 
The photo of the soon-to-be-auctioned fragment reminded me of photos I’ve seen of Scripture portions unearthed after centuries. Except the words are English and for some reason, the Steinbeck family or estate chose to hold onto it. How unlike God. Over millenniums of time and the work of many people and especially the Holy Spirit, God’s Word comes to us, not through an auction but through the free and amazing work of God.
 
We naturally think of this dog as a naughty pup. But in a way, he is a positive example for us. We have only to eat the manuscript of God. As people, we can delight in it, taste it, fully ingest it into the body of our souls. Let it shape our lives, even this Saturday, in every way.

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. and whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."
Colossians 3:16-17
 
Endnote: The Steinbeck fragment goes up for auction October 25. If you want to bid on it or just see the fragment, here is the link.

Out To Save the World by Lorraine Triggs

Actor David McCallum died last month. For the uninitiated, McCallum played Russian Illya Kuryakin, a secret agent in the TV show, “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Illya was sidekick to Secret Agent Napoleon Solo, and together these two good guys outwitted the evil agents from THRUSH. 
 
McCallum’s death transported me back to Miss Miller’s fifth-grade classroom, where a small group of friends and I re-enacted this popular 1960’s TV show. Susan, Becky and I were the good guys from U.N.C.L.E. (eventually there was a spinoff, “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.,” but we were trending at the time.) Kurt and Richard were the bad guys with THRUSH. We played mainly at recess, and occasionally in the classroom, using ball point pens to shoot messages across the room to each other or tapping out code on the desk. 
 
Like Solo and Kuryakin, we always outwitted THRUSH, making the world a safer place. As a fifth-grader also enamored with Emma Peel (Diana Rigg in “The Avengers”) and Nancy Drew, I was thoroughly convinced that collectively, we could save the world and make it a safer place. It was an interesting twist of the Cold War days that the television writers had a Russian and an American working together to vanquish the real bad guys.
 
One would think that by now, I’ve put away these childish things, but rest assured, my inner Kuryakin-Peel-Drew is alive and well. And given all the conflicts and wars and persecutions going on in the world today, the desire to make things right is stronger than ever.
 
On many levels making the world a safe place is a proper instinct. We work hard to create (or re-create) safe places to live, to work, to attend school, to worship, to be accepted and respected. We don’t want outsiders to intrude, and if they do, we’ll fight like my childhood heroes to beat them back.
 
The problem with self-made safe spaces is the intruders still get in. Some might chip away at the foundations of our safe places till we feel like giving up. While other intruders creep in with the darkness of disease, unemployment, divorce, wayward loved ones, failure, dementia, rejection, reminding us that our safe places aren’t safe after all.
 
The end of our manufactured safe places isn’t a call to despair and moan about how awful things are, rather it’s a call to hope and gladness. A call to hope in the Lord’s steadfast love, in his faithfulness, his deliverance, a call for gladness “because we trust in his holy name” writes the psalmist in Psalms 33:21.
 
And that goal to save the world has its fatal flaw—we can’t save ourselves, let alone the world. As the psalmist wrote earlier in Psalm 33: “The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.” (vv. 16, 17)
 
That’s very good news for you and me because the burden to save us was placed on another’s back, scarred and wounded as it was for our salvation, and not only ours but also the whole world.

We can still be about making the world a safe place and saving it as we point intruders to Jesus, the only hope for rescue and rest. and as we witness global tragedies, even as we seek proper responses we can fall before God in prayer and plead with him to work in ways we cannot apart from him.

Timeless Yosemite

Photographs by Eloise Voelker

Sky Night Lights

Photographs by Scott Davis

Altar Calls by Wil Triggs

I remember, as a boy, watching Billy Graham on our black and white television set. At the end of every broadcast, Graham would invite people to come forward to receive Christ, assuring them that "your friends will wait." And people would come forward, a lot of people. The invitation would go out to viewers to join in and call a phone number. 
 
The times I went on occasion to church with the lady who picked kids up around the neighborhood, or sometimes with my family or, as a high schooler, when friends with cars would come by and pick me up, that something happened at church, toward the end of the service usually. Music would be playing, and over the music, a preacher or another person of power and influence would be speaking, praying.  
 
With every head bowed and all eyes closed, if you want to raise your hand and say to God that you want to follow him, do that now. 
 
Sometimes the music itself carried the day and then the preacher speaking softly through a microphone or in the churches with no amplified sound, loud and urgent, a strange kind of intimacy. 
 
If you raised your hand, if you are ready, if God is speaking to you, if you want to surrender all, come down the aisle so that all can see that you are saying yes to Jesus. Come.  
 
Sometimes friends I knew would go forward. People of all ages. Those dressed in suits. Women in silk dresses or suits with matching hats. A working-class man who didn’t wear a suit. The rebellious teenager who walked down at least once a month. A little girl, uncertainly letting loose the hand of her mother, stepping into the aisle and working forward to join the others, if there were others.  
 
All of this while the rest of the congregation sang in unison, rejoicing and praying. We had sung the hymns. We listened to the choir. We passed the offering. We heard the sermon. God was at work. So this was how the service ended, people walking down the aisle for the altar call. 
 
Lorraine tells me that in the church where she grew up, some people judged the strength of the service based on the number of times they sang the chorus before the service ended. 
 
I think back on my experiences with this. In a church I began attending on a semi-regular basis, I noticed one lady going forward every week. A friend from high school went forward for the sins she had committed that week, a sort of Protestant confessional. I remember one guy joking that he went forward just so the service could end.  
 
Thinking back on those journeys down the aisle, I found this from a Christian History article: 
 
“Many people consider Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) to be the ‘father’ of the altar call. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1823, Finney did not begin giving public invitations until long after Methodists had made the altar call a regular part of their camp meetings. Finney, however, did more than anyone to establish altar calls as an accepted and popular practice in American evangelicalism. Finney regularly called anxious sinners to the front of the congregation to sit on an ‘anxious bench.’ There, they would receive prayer and often be preached to directly. The altar call was also one of Finney’s famous ‘new measures.’ He was convinced that ministers could produce revival by using the right methods, and that the altar call ‘was necessary to bring [sinners] out from among the mass of the ungodly to a public renunciation of their sinful ways.’” 
 
And this from a Gospel Coalition article quoted a description of George Whitefield’s call for immediate decision in a sermon:  
 
“Whitefield asked whether anyone wished ‘to take Christ for their husband.’ If they did, he extended an invitation: ‘Come and I’ll marry you to him just now.’ . . . A twenty-one-year old male convert said that when Whitefield ‘laid out the terms’ of the union with Christ, he found his ‘heart made sweetly to agree to those terms.’ Another convert ran to embrace a friend, exclaiming that the minister had ‘married my soul to Christ.’ . . . Whitefield wrote that many ‘were married to the Lord Jesus that night.’” 
 
I don’t think Whitefield was calling people forward when he invited people to be married to Jesus. Something else was going on of which the physical movement was a symptom. It wasn’t really the beginning, but something happening in the middle of faith for a lot of folks. 
 
The aisle doesn’t matter, but the heart does. We don’t do altar calls anymore, but there is a calling we must heed from God, the call to believe and receive and give our lives to God, not unlike marriage, a vow that lasts longer than marriage and earthly life. His promise to be faithful even when we fail.  
 
How can we even breathe apart from his lungs? How can we clearly see apart from his eyes? Every day he washes my feet. Every day of life, even in my sins and failures, falling back into nail-scarred wrists and the hole in his side, the shoulders of the Shepherd, the Spouse who is always at my side, nearer still to feel his breath on my sin-weakened frame promising peace, falling, rising, holding on to him, receiving new life to face this day whatever it holds. 
 
You still give me breath  
in the valley of death. 
In the pastures green you ever lead. 
My raging waves you still.
You drink the cup  
and do the Father’s will.
When I fall and want to hide 
There you are, at my side 
On the cross,  
empty grave,  
ascending the sky 
Your love is my love,  
I am still your bride 
Your love is my love ever even now, 
You conquer my sin,  
it’s gone away 
In my heart in your heart I hide, 
Faithful eventide. 

Starstruck by Lorraine Triggs

It was probably the timing—a week before our 35th wedding anniversary—that made me read an article about Michelin-star restaurants. In the September 17 New York Times article, “Michelin’s Coveted Stars Can Come with Some Costs,” author Julia Moskin notes that the “Michelin Guide—owned by the French tire manufacturer—is the world’s most recognized authority on fine dining.” Moskin discovered that in “interviews, dozens of restauranteurs, chefs and officials across the country said ‘the status the stars confer is priceless and comes with vast earning potential.'”

Those coveted stars had a humbler origin than I thought. According to the article, “the star system—one, worth a trip; two, worth a detour; three, worth a journey—was devised more than a century ago to guide businessmen as they motored around France on the company’s tires.”

The owner of Southern California’s only three-star restaurant noted that the stakes are higher today when someone is flying from Germany to San Diego to eat at your restaurant.

There’s also intrigue about how Michelin awards those coveted stars. Notes Moskin, “Curiosity has always swirled around how the company does it work: Who are the inspectors? How often do they visit? What does it take to rise from two stars to three?”  

I’d rather be tooling around the south of France on a set of Michelin tires than worrying about rising from two stars to three. But reading about the process of ranking and stars does have a certain appeal. 

It's a human thing. I mean, ranking and analyzing and thinking how some of us are better than others is just so natural. I begin to fret over my own set of stars. And in those mad moments, I think, what’s wrong with wanting more stars? Why shouldn’t someone confer four stars, maybe five, on my insightful (read right) opinions, my impressive CV and my curated treasures. And these stars come with a bonus—an overestimation of myself. Ta-da!

When status stardust blinds me to who I am, I need the clear-eyed words of the Apostle Paul: “Don’t cherish exaggerated ideas of yourself or your importance, buy try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you all.” (Romans 12:3, Phillips)

From that sane estimate flows another quality, a quality likely unheard of in Michelin Guide world—humility. Charles Spurgeon said that “humility is to make a right estimation of oneself.”

In the Christ follower's world, this right estimation has its beginnings and end in paradox. We hear this in a king's humble cry, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” (Psalm 51:1) We see paradox in an ordinary young woman’s extraordinary submission to God, and she sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.” (Luke 1:47, 48) 

The culmination of paradox is Jesus. Paul’s lyrical prose in Philippians 2 takes us to heaven, where Jesus doesn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Then down to earth where Jesus not only is born in the likeness of men, but also takes the form of a servant, and we go down yet again as Jesus “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” And Paul takes us back to heaven where Jesus is not just exalted, but highly exalted.
 
That's another paradox at play. The paradox in our lives where we can have the mind of Christ our Savior, and instead of grasping for status, we shine as lights in a dark world. We give ourselves in service to him and to one another. The day will come when the king of paradox doesn't give us stars for what we've acheved but crowns for what he has done in and through us.

Walking Down the Aisle By Wil Triggs

On September 24 more than a few years ago, I did not walk down the aisle of College Church. I stood at the front of the church, my pastor on one side of me and my best friend on the other. I didn’t walk down the aisle, but Lorraine did. She walked alone, in loving memory of her father, who had died 21 years before. She walked toward me, everyone in the church looking at her, and then at me, and as we drew nearer one another, at both of us.

I was so overcome with emotion that I couldn’t sing. The words of the hymn we had so carefully selected would not come out of my mouth. What if I’m like this through the whole service, I wondered. I’m going to have to actually speak the vows. With God’s help and Lorraine’s hands in mine, I found my voice so everyone could hear. We were wed. Some people reading this were with us on that day.

Our wedding happened in church, the sacred and simple place where we planned to spend our lives together, with the people we would be spending our lives with. I know it’s not fashionable, but it wasn’t about fashion. For us at that time, there was no other place for our wedding to happen. This was before destination weddings, or at least we didn’t know about them.

I remember the wedding sermon, at least the part directed at me, as a call to die, to set aside my selfish desires to serve Lorraine. This was pretty sobering. Jesus dying on the cross for our sin and me being a Christlike husband to her. It has always seemed like the harder calling than the instruction to wives, which seems to generate all the anger and debate. Both callings are hard in their own way, which is why marriage is redemptive as we forgive and ask for forgiveness.

Every week we walk down the aisle of the church to sit in a pew and worship God with everyone else who is there. Every week God meets us there, too. He meets us in a special way at gathered-together worship. But what kind of a bride are we?

In Kindergarten Bible school, we just studied the gift of precious perfume poured out in worship on the feet of Jesus. People weren’t sure what to make of it when it happened, except for Judas, who found it especially disgusting. Some churches do foot-washing, but none that I know of pour out expensive and costly oils or perfume in worship. That’s just, well, kind of weird. Not responsible. A waste.

In the different debates about submission and authority, for those who are not married and feel as if they might be missing out, for those who grieve, or for people that think they have it all planned out just right, is love getting lost in laws and practices and debates about who is right?

If we give ourselves over to loving Jesus, what might we do? Dare we even consider the question? Jesus died for my sins, and I have new life in the resurrection. But does Jesus have my heart? Has he captured it or am I holding something back? I lost my voice for a few moments at the front of College Church as Lorraine approached me. But as Christ stands at the front and we draw near to him, how can we break the jar and pour it out onto his feet? Maybe it’s not losing your voice in the moment of love but finding it in the awe of the simple healing touch of his cloak. It’s not losing our voice but daring to speak of his wondrous works. Are we silent for fear that we might confuse people, or they might think we’re drunk or mad?

What kind of a bride are we? Church, not me, all of us together, mysteriously, are the object of his love and delight.

Let love burn like the Pentecostal fires, giving voice where once we dared not speak, love for Jesus in worship, and gratitude for how he did what no one else dared to do, for the wisdom of God that would dream of redemption that none of us humans would have ever devised or chosen even if we had.

We are waiting for that wedding day, when the kingdom that is now and yet not yet has come, and, in our resurrected splendor, we at long last see Jesus, there waiting and welcoming us—the One whom our hearts adore and worship.

Golden ring of eternity
When all the dross is burned away
Radiant we stand before his lovely gaze.
Hand in hand before the throne we go
Nothing left but to love and adore
Engagement ring, a thorn-crafted stone
Await the trumpet call, never again alone.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready (Revelation 19:7)

Above, Below, All Around By Wil Triggs

Long ago we drove, three friends and me, for hours across town, beyond the grapevine, into the valley, then up Sierra’s side to roads end.
 
We walked with dried foods and rolled up beds. For days we hiked, through cedar and pine, up to the place where nothing more could grow. Above the timberline we lay down on granite ground.
 
As the sun sank into night’s duvet, we looked up at the theater of the sky at the night performers: stars, planets, meteors, satellites, planes, but mostly stars leaving us entranced with awe.
 
They say there is too much man-made light for us to see this show in every-day life.
 
But then, there are other spaces to explore. Instead of looking above, we look below, and there it is again, awe springing out of the ground. Spring bulbs from the thawing mound of dirt. Spring and summer sprout all wonder—fritillarias, lavender, the blooming rose give way to autumn’s aster, mums all sing. Fount of bounty, plants burst forth. Tomatoes, corn, beans, leeks, root vegetables coming out like miracles of flavor out of the ground below.
 
Do grocery stores overflowing keep me from seeing the wonder that springs from the ground? Are the lights of modern agriculture and commerce too bright for me to see this other wonder of God?
 
Does my own focus only on the path ahead, my list of things to do today, keep me from seeing wonder? I want to check things off my list and move on. And then I must remember to add four other things I’ve just thought of to the other to-do's. Working my way through the list, this is my day. Where's my backpack when I need it?
 
But I don’t need to backpack for days or harvest a homegrown bounty to see the wonders of God.

Around me, people. Little worlds. Each one a universe of tragedy and comedy—epic, simple, different like stars or plants, collections of failure and success and seeing the good to which we all say yes, beautiful as the first snow blanketing like a wedding veil. Every person their own winter’s tale.
 
I only have to pause and look above the path or below or around me to see the awe of the shepherd, farmer, father, friend. Throughout the day and night again, in awe I live at home, at work, above, below, all around, alive and living in the song of being found. So sing the simple lullaby of awe not for the wonder of things made but the maker whose splendor will never fade.
 
All praise to You, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light.
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath the shelter of Your wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for this I pray,
The wrong that I have done this day.
May peace with God and neighbor be,
Before I sleep restored to me.

Lord, may I be at rest in You
And sweetly sleep the whole night thro'.
Refresh my strength, for Your own sake,
So I may serve You when I wake.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.